


Confessions

by FromFanToStan



Series: First Times [5]
Category: One Direction (Band), zayn malik - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, M/M, Secrets, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2019-11-24 12:52:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18165443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromFanToStan/pseuds/FromFanToStan
Summary: Harry and Zayn grow closer by telling each other secrets. Some are harder to tell than others. Now complete although The First Times series will continue.





	1. First Confession: Zayn

**Author's Note:**

> Rated explicit for later chapters.

Secrets, when they’re created, are like tiny bits of broken glass we swallow. They cut us up from inside, but no one knows we’re bleeding unless we tell them. Zayn learns this with Harry. A few weeks after they pull together, after they have studiously not talked about it at all, Harry comes to his hotel room on a night when Zayn has not gone out. Harry is drunk and lonely, he says. Can he sleep with Zayn? Instead of sleeping, though, they do something much more dangerous. As usual, it's Harry's idea, but Zayn follows his lead helplessly. "Tell me a secret, Zayn. Something no one else knows." He tells Harry about the time he thought he was dying, the first he has ever told the story to anyone.

When Zayn was fifteen, his dad bought him a used motor scooter. It was red, except where little bits of paint had chipped off, and it was loud, enough that Zayn had to walk it down to the field near their house to ride it. It wasn’t street legal; Yaser had said that Zayn would have to work on it to get it up to code and he’d have to study for his license, and work for the money to pay for gas and driving lessons and parts and all the rest, but Zayn didn’t care. He loved walking it down to the end of the street, lifting it over the kerb, and then starting it up. He loved the feeling of flying it gave him to bounce in and out of potholes. He didn’t mind all the times he fell off, because getting back on meant getting to fly again. He felt free, for the first and only time in his life.

It took a bit to notice the knot that had appeared at the base of his spine, just above the top of his crack. At first, Zayn just thought he was sore from so much riding. Then he noticed that there was a bump. It was little, at first, but Zayn felt it, felt that it was Other and hard, but it was small and probably nothing, he told himself. A week later it was bigger and a bit painful to the touch. A week later and he couldn’t comfortably ride his scooter, and he could see it when he got his mother’s hand mirror and held it just right. It was just a protrusion, not inflamed or bruised, just a thing that he now had on his body that he had not had before.

He thought gloomily, in his pessimistic way, that probably it was cancer of the spine. Obviously it was a tumor, growing wildly out of control. Zayn imagined the cells around his tailbone multiplying frenetically, maybe beginning to curl up around his spine the way the wisteria at the edge of the field wound its new growth around the electric pole. Maybe it had been growing for months, and this was the end of it, not the beginning. He stopped being able to sleep easily; lying on his back was impossible. Every time he flipped from one side to the other during the night the pain from the growth woke him up. He wondered how long he had to live and if his dad’s grandfather, whom he had never met but who had died fairly young, had had cancer of the spine too. 

He might have said something to his mum, but he knew that she would make him go to the doctor, and then the doctor would see that it was cancer, look gravely at him, make the referral to a specialist, but it would take months to get in, and meanwhile he would grow thinner and thinner and then finally waste away before he ever saw the specialist. He imagined his sisters being sorry for making fun of him after he’d gone; he wished that he had had the chance to have sex, or at least to feel a girl’s body next to his, preferably naked. He wondered if Deanna next door would feel sorry for him if he told her he was dying. Maybe she would have sex with him out of pity. Harry laughs when Zayn tells him this part, and Zayn realizes that this is a good story, a funny story, and also that Harry is really listening to him. His feeling about this part of his past shifts slightly. He continues, warming to the telling.

Of course, in a small house with so many people like the Maliks’, nobody had particularly noticed that Zayn wasn’t riding his scooter, nor that he wasn’t talking much, nor that he was up a lot in the middle of the night. Everyone loved him, but there were a lot of them, and it was noisy and crowded and chaotic most of the time. He blended in, and so he spent his summer, what was left of it, terrified and lonely and waiting for death.

The growth, by the time school was about to start, was almost the size of a lime and no longer solid feeling, something that Zayn noticed when he rolled over in his single bed, touching it compulsively like a sore tooth. He was beginning to wonder if it was cancer after all. Maybe it could be just an infection, but if so, had he let it go too long? Was the infection now throughout his system, slowly poisoning him from within? When Zayn tells Harry how it squished a bit and felt like an under-inflated balloon, Harry grimaces sympathetically. “It still felt really sore, though,” he tells Harry, and Harry nods at him, wide-eyed. He gets it; Zayn can tell.

The day before he was due to go back to school, he strained a bit taking a shit and he felt the thing pop. When it burst, liquid ran down his crack and into the toilet. He took some toilet paper and gently patted the place where his tumor had been, only now it was completely deflated and weeping. He got a flannel wet and wiped at the base of his spine gently before getting the hand mirror again and angling it over his shoulder. He could see puffy, wet-looking skin, open, with ragged edges. It was nothing, then.With his pants around his ankles, he shuffled over to the bathroom cabinet by the door, got one of his mother’s sanitary pads and some medical tape, and managed to cover it well enough to put his pants back on. By that time, Daniya was yelling for him to get out, and he settled an expression of indifference onto his face before opening the door. 

What had come out of his body was mostly yellow with streaks of red, but he didn't mind that it was gross; he felt relief and shame and exhilaration that he was going to live, because he knew that cancerous tumors don’t burst open and they aren’t filled with pus, and whatever this was it was now outside him. There was no pressure on his spine, but he still never rode the scooter again. 

“That must have been the worst summer ever,” Harry says, and he squeezes Zayn’s forearm. Zayn feels a release. He has been ashamed of how stupidly he had spent the summer, how silly and unmanly it was to worry about dying like that, over what turned out to be nothing, but Harry has made him feel like it was understandable, like he would have done the same. He feels grateful for Harry’s calm understanding.

Harry tells Zayn a story too. Being Harry, his is about sex. He scoots closer to Zayn in the bed they have come to share whenever they have a hotel night before whispering in his ear, “You can’t tell anyone this story, Z. It’d ruin my reputation. Promise?”

Zayn feels the thrill of Harry’s nearness and of the coming confidence. He has never felt closer to anyone, not even Charles, whom Zayn will confess to Harry within weeks, and after he tells, voice tentative and shaking, he hopes that Harry will lean over him, his lips red and lush, a determined look on his face, lean over him and press his mouth to Zayn’s, push into Zayn’s mouth with his soft tongue, tease him with the taste and smell of him, before pulling away to say, eyes turned serious, “I want to make you forget him, Zayn. Will you let me?” Instead, Harry will fall asleep, but Zayn will forgive him.

Zayn will, it seems, forgive Harry anything. It will take months before Harry realizes this about Zayn. It will take another two years before he finds the limit of his tolerance for anything Harry does.


	2. First Confessions: Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry returns Zayn's confidence with his own.

Harry is playing the long game with Zayn. He wants him, more than ever, but he doesn’t want to frighten him. He knows now that Zayn is less experienced than he, about most things, and that Zayn is shy and cautious. Harry starts by asking to sleep with Zayn on their hotel nights. It’s true that he hates to be alone, always has done, since Dez had left the family. For weeks after, he slept with his mom, even though he was seven and too old for it. It is the first secret he tells Zayn, although Zayn doesn’t seem to realize he’s even confessed anything at the time.

“Tell me a secret, Zayn,” Harry whispers to him, low and seductive. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone before.”

Zayn does. It’s funny, in a way, but it’s so Zayn, that he would think he was dying and tell no one, that he would never tell anyone. Harry would have dined out on the “tumor” for months, complained loudly of being in pain, made Gemma do all his chores, asked for ice or a soft pillow under his bum, but Zayn, never. He suffered through it all in silence. If Harry had been thinking, he might have wondered about Zayn’s propensity for silence, for holding things in, but he was intoxicated by Zayn’s dark, masculine beauty, by the stubble that appeared every evening and framed his pink lips, by the dark perfect brows over his perfectly shaped golden brown eyes with their improbably feminine lashes. He feels tender toward Zayn, protective even, and wants to give him something too. 

“You mustn’t ever tell this story, Z. Promise?” Zayn nods, serious. “I mean it. It will ruin my reputation as a ladies man.” Harry grins to show he’s not serious, really, because short of sucking Zayn’s dick on stage, his reputation is secure. Still, he’s never told this, not to anyone.

He tells Zayn about the first time he tried to have sex with a girl. She was older than he, one of Gemma’s friends. They would whistle at him if they caught him coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, and sometimes he would wank himself just to the point of being half hard, enough so that the girls could see the line of his dick through one of the thin white towels that was all the family could afford then.

One of Gemma’s friends, Denise, called Easy, followed Harry into his room one evening when Gemma and their other friend Jules had gone downstairs to get snacks. Harry heard the door open and dropped the towel.

“On purpose, Harry?” Zayn asks him, incredulous. “Like, you wanted her to see your bum?”

“Hey, I’ve got a quite nice bum! She’d already been looking--thought I’d give her more of what she was looking at.”

He had looked over his shoulder and smiled. Who knows where a 14-year-old Harry got the moxie? He had always been bold, always acted as if he knew what he was doing whether he did or not, always made up for cheekiness by having the lovely manners taught him and Gemma by Anne. 

“Oi, Haz! You’re cheeky for real!” Easy told him. “Gonna give us a look at what’s up front?”

Harry might of, but even then he played a longer game, “Gem will be back in a minute. I can come to yours later, though--let you look your fill and more. Can you sneak me in, Ease?”

“Dirty bugger! If I do, Harry, you can’t tell Gemma.” He swore; she looked dubious but tempted.

“All right then, babe. Throw a rock at my window. You know which one’s mine. You can show me what you’ve got. No promises, though. Just a look, most like. Midnight. Don’t get caught sneaking out, yeah? Little Harry--who knew?” She left the room, shaking her head back at him. “Little Harry Styles. Gonna show me what he’s got.”

It was Zayn’s turn to laugh. “You really were a cheeky little fucker, Haz. I was afraid to touch a girl’s boob through her top at fourteen. Where did you get the nerve?”

He didn’t know. He just had it, always had.

That night he took a long hot shower, washing under his foreskin carefully, washing his crack and hole, because who knew what a mature woman of seventeen might want to do? He washed everything else carefully, applied deodorant, thought about after shave but decided it was pointless for a boy who didn’t even have peach fuzz on his face. At 11:50 he moved quietly through the small apartment, shoes in hand, slipped through the door, careful not to open it wide enough to cause the squeak that would surely wake his mother, and stepped lightly down the stairs to the door out to the street. Easy was a block away. He took his time, reasoning it wouldn’t hurt to make her wait a bit.

“Oi, what a lad you were, Harry! You’ve got an older woman letting you in her bedroom, and you’re gonna make her wait till she’s gagging for it!” Zayn laughs, but his eyes are shining with admiration. “Go on, then. What’s embarrassing about this?”

What was embarrassing was that Harry had thrown the rock perfectly, woken Easy up, had her come let him in the quiet house and hold his hand to guide him up the stairs to her bedroom, had stripped down when she told him to, got hard just by having her eyes on him.

“Zayn, I was fourteen! I’d only kissed a girl before, and Easy was wearing a tank top and knickers, nothing else. I’d already had a good look at her bum going up the stairs behind her, and by the time I stripped off my pants, my dick was hard as a diamond.”

Easy had been laughing quietly at him, but she stopped when she saw his dick. It was the first Harry knew that he was big. Gemma had never seen him with a hard-on, thank God, nor his mum, thank God and all the Fates, and he’d only ever seen other boys with soft dicks. He wasn’t sure his was big. He thought it was, but they didn’t have internet, couldn’t afford it, not at school either then, so he wasn’t sure until Easy looked down at him and said, “Oh my. Will you look at that. No wonder you’re so cheeky.”

She motioned him over, pulled the covers down, slipped her knickers down and her top up, and then she spread her legs, rubbed between them, and said, “I want to feel that inside me, Haz. Grab us a condom from the drawer there, will ya?”

Just the act of her rolling the condom down his dick and then touching him to guide him inside her made him come. At the memory, Harry covers his face with both hands and groans. “Imagine, Zayn. I was on the brink of having real sex, penetrative sex, with a woman, and I shot my load in the condom.” He looks so woeful that Zayn bites his lip, hard, not to laugh. 

“What happened, then? Was she nice about it, at least?”

“God, no. She told me I might have a big boy’s cock but I had a little boy’s moves and to get the fuck out of her house before her parents woke up. So that’s what I did, and by the time I was at her school the next year she was gone. I never saw her again. I don’t think she even came over to see Gem after that.”

He looks up through his fringe at Zayn, wondering if he’s made a mistake telling the story, if he’s misjudged Zayn’s kindness. He would never have told this to Louis, would never have heard the end of it. “Don’t tell Louis, please, Z. Don’t. He’ll tease me forever.”

But Zayn’s look is softer than it’s ever been. He’s smiling with so much affection that Harry beams at him. “I was a right little wanker, wasn’t I? Thought I could run with the big dogs but I was just a tiny pup.”

“Yeah, but you went for it, Haz. Good on you. I love how brave you are, how you go for it, no matter what. You might have been telling me about your first fuck if things had gone according to plan.”

“Stop, Z, you’re teasing me now!” He buries his head in his arms, and then he feels Zayn pull him close, feels Zayn’s arms come around him and his stubbled chin on his shoulder. “Never, Harry. I might tease a bit, but never to be unkind. I’m glad you trusted me with your story.”

Harry is, too.


	3. Encounters: Zayn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn tells Harry something he's never told anyone, and the Earth keeps spinning.

Later, he and Harry make their own confessional: whoever needs to tell something, if it’s really personal and hard to say, will slide off the end of the bed and sit, facing the TV and not the friend, on the floor. It’s where all of their most personal stories are shared.

Zayn tells Harry about the summer he was sixteen and had determined to read all of Victorian literature, because he wanted to go to uni and study to be an English teacher. In the manner of working class lads everywhere, he had embarked upon self-improvement with no real idea of how it was to be done, so he had read all of Shakespeare, and then randomly Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, E.M. Forster. He read all of Tolkien, of course, but that was just for pleasure. It was when someone told him to read D.H. Lawrence for the “dirty parts” that he had realized that he had neglected an entire period of British Literature, and he began to read the Victorians, starting with Dickens. 

Zayn loved Dickens. His stories of the rich life in London occurring beneath the notice of the better off, the blacksmiths and washing women and thieves, delighted him with their chaotic exuberance. He thought that his own family was more like these characters than anyone he’d met in the white world, and he identified with almost all the protagonists. He read _Great Expectations_ three times and cried every time for poor Pip, whose sudden good fortune and romantic woes remind him of his own. Like many autodidacts, Zayn is a completist, and wants to read all of Dickens, every novel. He couldn’t find _Dombey and Son_ , an obscure title, so he made his first trip to a used book store, the only one in town. 

He still associates the smell of damp paper and dust with lustful infatuation, because it was in this shop where he did not find _Dombey and Son_ but did find an older boy, blonde, blued-eyed, slim, and tall, the opposite of Zayn in every way. His name was Charles, he had said, when Zayn had excused himself to get by him in the narrow aisle, and the boy had looked him up and down until Zayn wanted to blush. He had asked Zayn in a forthright manner what he was looking for and if he could reach the top shelves for him. His accent was posh but warm, rather like Harry’s, Zayn thinks now. He had been easy to engage in conversation, and he knew all the Victorians, offered to make Zayn a list of books to read. He was exotic, in Zayn’s eyes, living as he did in a neighborhood and a city often called Little Pakistan. More importantly, he was friendly and seemed to take Zayn seriously. They had walked out of the shop together that day, and a friendship was born. It lasted until Charles left for uni that September, and then Zayn never heard from him again.

Zayn tells Harry the rest hesitantly. If he hadn’t been drunk, he might never have told it, given their history and what his motivation for the telling might seem. He and Charles had kissed. They had rubbed against each other until they came in their pants. Charles had given Zayn his first blow job, before he had ever touched a girl’s breast. Zayn had fallen in love with him. He pined for him for months after he left, was still pining when the X Factor auditions came round. His mum had even said, Zayn, you’re going. You’ve a beautiful voice, and I’m tired of you moping around the house looking like your dog died.

As Zayn tells Harry this part of the story, his voice stutters and stops, but Harry drapes soft warm arms over his chest and scoots closer to him at the end of the bed. He puts his chin on Zayn’s shoulder and breathes against his collarbone. Zayn feels the heat of Harry’s breath before a soft kiss against the side of his neck, just under his ear.

He knows already that Harry is bisexual and that he was for a time frustrated by Louis’s unwillingness to do more than snog. He feels safe, telling the truth about the only boy that he had ever loved. It’s the first time in a long time, since X Factor really, that he’s thought of Charles. He wonders if Charles has seen him on the telly, if he feels sorry that he let Zayn get away. “You should look him up,” Harry says loyally. “He’d be crazy not to want you now.”

“Oi, Haz, I don’t want him any more. It was ages ago, and I was a right softie for posh boys then. I’m much tougher now.” He laughs and winks over his shoulder at Harry, and Harry punches him in the side but instead of kissing him as Zayn rather hopes, he just says softly, “There’s no way Charles was as fit as you. He was the lucky one, Z,” and then Harry rubs a thumb across Zayn’s cheekbone before he yawns, crawls back to his pillow, and within seconds begins to snore. If this is not what Zayn was hoping for, he forgives Harry instantly. He thinks he does, anyway.

**********

A few days later, they have a day off, but as usual they’ve all overdone after the show, and it’s going on for two in the afternoon when Zayn wakes up enough to want tea and a cig. He puts on shorts and heads up to the private rooftop pool when he’s made his cup, where he finds Louis stretched out on a lounger turning pink. 

“Lou, aren’t you going to burn out here?”

“Nah, I’m wearing suntan lotion, aren’t I? And I tan quick. Not like you, I guess, but quick enough. What do you care, anyway?”

“I don’t, I suppose, except you’ll be whingeing about being in pain all night if you get burnt.”

Louis has passed Harry off to Zayn without a murmur, it seems. Over the course of the last months, Harry has stopped looking at Louis like he has all the answers, and Louis has stopped looking at Harry like he wants to devour him. Zayn doesn’t know what happened, but as the direct beneficiary he hasn’t questioned it. He has to ask, though.

“Louis, can I ask you summat?”

Louis opens one eye skeptically. “Why do I feel like I’m not going to like this question?”

“Nah, I have to ask. You know Harry and me, well, we’ve been getting close, I guess, and, I dunno, he’s my mate and everything, but it’s like you said about him a long time ago, innit? He’s very fuckable.” Zayn waits a minute, but Louis just looks back at him wearing a half smile. 

“I don’t think he feels the same, because he never does anything sexual, like, even though we sleep together a lot of nights and talk about everything. You and him used to, well, ok, don’t get mad, but Harry says you snogged but you never would let him do anything more. Would you care if we, like, if he and I were to...?”

“Z, I do not care on my own account, but I think it would be a mistake of epic proportions for you.”

“Why? Do you think he doesn’t like me that way?”

“Ha! Oh, no, he likes you that way. Jesus, you idiot, we all like you that way. You’re well fit, Harry’s equal easily, better looking really, and you’re so sweet and affectionate. You always notice when someone is feeling bad or needs a hug--you’re way nicer than him. If you just want to be with a boy, you can pull me.” 

“Shut up, you wanker. You wouldn’t do anything with Haz, and he’s way sexier than me.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about who’s sexier, but you’re wrong, and anyway, you should stay away from Haz on account of the likelihood of catching feelings. Don’t give me that look. You know how you are. You and Li, really. The rest of us are cold bastards. Give us a light, yeah?”

Zayn lights a cigarette for Louis, and then one for himself, and then he asks, “Then ain’t you afraid I’d catch feelings for you? Like, if we hooked up?”

“Absolutely not. You’re already half in love with Haz, and I know you see Perrie when you can, although you’ve not made her any promises? You don’t have any heart left over. I’m safe. Anyway, I’m seeing Eleanor, and I promised her I wouldn’t see any other women but she did not ask me about blokes, did she? Think about it.” Louis winks at him, stubs his cigarette out, and jumps in the pool with a splash. He swims easily over to the side closest to Zayn, propping himself on the concrete ledge. They all swim except for Zayn.

“Let me give you a swim lesson, Z. Come on in.”

Zayn comes to the end, sits, puts his legs in, even while saying “Nah, I’m scared of the water, Louis, you know that. I had a traumatic experience as a child.”

“Really? Tell Uncle Louis all about it.”

“Nah, you know I tell Harry all my trauma. He’s my therapist in the band.”

Louis laughs a little but tugs at Zayn’s hips until he finds himself in the water against the side. It’s shallow, and even though he resists, it’s half-hearted. He allows Louis to pull him into the water, relaxing when he touches bottom and it’s only up to his waist.

“Ok, now, Z, work your way down to the board using the side to hold onto. When you get to the board I’ll show you how to kick your legs, yeah?”

Z does it, because he usually does what Louis says, what any of them says. He and Harry are alike in that way too. Louis and Liam boss about different things, Niall goes his own way even when he seems easygoing, but Harry and Zayn do as they’re told. That’s what Zayn thinks. He won’t talk much, but he’ll do everything else.

Instead of teaching him how to kick his legs, though, Louis cages Zayn in to the side, arms under his, and back pressed against his. He speaks softly, even though there’s only a single security at the rooftop door to keep the curious away. 

“It’s like this, Z. You and me and Li and Niall, we’re all in front of a buffet, and we can have anything we want at the buffet, but if you just look across the dining hall, Harry is at a smorgasbord. He’s got everything we’ve got, plus lobster and caviar, and champagne, and whatever. You and me pull pretty girls. Harry pulls pretty celebrities. You and me get propositioned ten times a day; Harry gets pulled fifty. Whatever you’re getting he’s getting more. It’s just the way it is. He’s the star.”

Zayn looks at Louis, wondering why he’s saying all this. “So you don’t think I’m good enough for the star, is that it, Lou?”

“You’re good enough for anyone, Z. Turn ‘round toward me. Don’t be afraid. I’ve got you.”

Zayn does, by then curious about Louis and what is going to happen next, and then Louis kisses him. The big surprise of Louis is that he is rough and loud, and so Zayn had imagined that he would be rough and loud about sex, but instead his kiss is soft and gentle, at first just pressing his lips to Zayn’s. They’re cold but warm up quickly, and then he bites very gently on Zayn’s lower lip and whispers that he’s always wanted to do that, and then he slips just the tip of his tongue into Zayn’s mouth, and then they are kissing for real, and Louis lets his mouth fall open more and there is room for Zayn’s tongue, and he tries to be slow and gentle like Louis but he likes it so much that pretty soon he is sliding Louis’ tongue between his teeth and exploring Louis’ mouth with his tongue like he is looking for something or like he’s found something, and then they are both hard. 

Louis slips his hand into Zayn’s trunks, cold at first from the water and then warm from moving against Zayn, and he strokes Zayn’s cock four maybe five times before Zayn is spilling into the water. Louis laughs, but it’s warm, not like Louis laughs most of the time, which can be mocking, just a happy laugh that they are in the water and they are pressed together and Zayn is panting against Louis’ shoulder. Zayn says, “I’m afraid to let go of you,” and Louis says, “It’s ok I’ve got you, you won’t drown, put your hand on me,” and Zayn trusts Louis for some reason. He puts his hands on Louis’ shoulders, and then when he feels safe he lets go with one hand, and he pulls at Louis’ cock a few times, and then Louis is spilling over his knuckles, warm in the cold water, and he bites Zayn’s ear with his perfect straight white teeth, and Zayn remembers the night he saw him bite Harry’s ear, but according to Harry this rest never happened.

And then Zayn feels a shadow block the sun and opens his eyes, and Harry is there, squinting down at them, with his hand over his eyes, and the corners of his mouth pulled down. “Why are you doing this?” he says, and then, “I thought you both wanted me,” and Zayn feels a brief rush of shame, but he controls the blush that wants to color his cheeks and instead looks up at Harry coolly. Harry is a slag, and he’s not in charge of what his conquests do. Even though Zayn knows he has feelings for Harry, and even though Harry has seen him bleeding, right now he doesn’t care what Harry thinks, and a small part of him is glad he’s hurt.

Harry turns and stomps away to the heavy steel door between them and the rest of the hotel and life. He would usually speak to the security, but this time he only yanks the door open and slams it shut behind him.

Zayn turns to Louis, uncertain.

“Ah, Zayn, fuck ‘em. He has everyone. Maybe he can’t have you all the time. He should learn how to live with not getting what you want.”

Zayn doesn’t know what he’s stumbled into, but he gets out of the pool too, dries off, grabs his smokes, and goes back inside. It’s too easy, this constant togetherness. It’s too easy to turn to each other for needs, and Zayn thinks that he should stop it. He loves the band, loves the feeling that nothing happening to him isn’t known and understood, but he also feels like he’s given up all his privacy as well. It’s good that Harry is mad. He doesn’t need to give up his secrets to anyone anyway. He’ll go back to being mysterious. It’s better that way.


	4. Encounters: Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is really mad at Zayn, but he misses him more than anything. It's missing Zayn that leads him to tell something he's never told anyone as the two grow closer.

_Harry knows he has no right to be mad at Zayn. It’s entirely Louis who he should be furious with. And yet. He makes up with Louis the same day when Louis knocks on his room door._

_“Haz? Let me in, mate, and let’s talk this through.”_

_He opens the door but in his sulkiness won’t make eye contact with Lou, who has been in Zayn’s pants. He knows how Zayn looks when he comes, and Louis gave him that look. He hates Lou, probably._

_“Babe. Don’t, Harry. Zayn’s fit, we all want to do ‘em, I got there first because I don’t give a fuck. I couldn’t do it with you because it would have meant something.”_

_Harry glances up through the fringe covering his eyes. “That’s why?”_

_“Course, why else? You’re mad fuckable, Zayn thinks so too.”_

_And those, as Louis well knows, are the magic words, causing Harry’s face to light up and questions to spill out of his lips. The pout disappears as he peppers Louis with questions. Had Zayn said something? When and where? Did Louis remember his exact words?_

_And if Louis felt a twinge of jealousy at how easily he is forgiven and how avidly Harry shows his interest in Zayn, well, that’s something he’ll never tell anyone about. He’s fixed his relationship with Harry, and Harry will fix his relationship with Zayn, which is more emotional than Louis thought. Oh well. They’re older now, more likely to want closeness with getting off. It’s made one night stands less fun all round._

**********

Harry waits three days. This is a long time for him. He doesn’t speak to Zayn unless he has to. He doesn’t look at him on stage. He stands on the other side of Liam or Niall, flirts with the crowd, makes bad jokes. He shows that he’s FINE. Meanwhile, he’s aware that at first Zayn does the same. Oh, Zayn, thinking he can play the long game when it’s Harry’s absolute specialty.

Or maybe it just used to be his specialty, because on the third night he goes out with the lads, leaving Zayn behind, and he has too many shots, and then once he’s back in his room he doesn’t even think, he sits on the floor at the foot of his bed, and he texts Zayn with unsteady fingers:

_bless me father for I have sinned_

He leaves the door slightly ajar, and then he waits at the foot of the bed, feeling sick from the sweet shots and the adrenaline of the show and missing Zayn and fan emotions and his own longing. He hopes he won’t have to wait long. He doesn’t.

He smells Zayn before he hears him, since his head is lolling down toward his chest. He wants to be awake and sober, but he drank so many shots. He feels Zayn’s weight on the bed and the movement as he crawls down to Harry’s end, puts his chin on Harry’s shoulder, says, “Well?”

Harry surprises himself. Instead of telling the story that he had decided would be tonight’s confessional, he says, “I’m sorry, Z.”

“What are you sorry for, babe?” Zayn says, with a firmness in his voice that Harry likes very much.

“I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you like a jealous schoolboy. I’m sorry that I’ve acted like you owe me something when you don’t. We’ve never even done anything. You can fuck around with anyone you want, so can I, I don’t have a right to act any kind of way about it--”

Zayn stops him, finally, before he can say anything even more stupid. “Yeah, I hate it when you avoid me. I miss you. I miss our nights like this, and I miss you being playful and sexy with me on stage.”

“You like it? On stage, I mean? You’ve never said.”

“Do I need to say? You can tell just by looking at me, you asshole. Haz, stop pretending you don’t know full well your effect. Those big eyes and curly hair--you’re like a baby animal that we all coo over. It’s disgusting really.” But Zayn laughs and reaches a hand up under Harry’s curls in back, just where he likes it, and scratches into his skull. Harry moans a little, because it feels so good.

“So, do you have anything else to confess, son?” Zayn asks in a low voice, his fingers scratching into Harry’s scalp and his breath making warm puffs into Harry’s ear, and then Harry wants to tell him everything, more than he had planned, just all of it, every corner of his twisted psyche, so that Zayn knows everything about him, but on the other hand he can’t say anything at all.

He apologizes again, and he cries a little, because he’s missed his Zayn, who was so brave to tell him he’d been with a boy, and then Harry had been so wrong to get mad if Zayn messed around with a boy when he already knew Zayn liked it. He’s been telling Harry everything he ever did that he’s never told anyone. Harry knows that Zayn feels he’s given Harry all this power over him. So he makes up his mind to tell this story.

“Yeah, Z. I do. I want to confess. Don’t look at me, ok? You’re going to think I’m gross.”

“Never,” Zayn replies, but Harry glances toward him and sees that his eyes are fixed on the TV screen. Harry begins.

“When I was wee, my mum has always told me that all I had to do was hold my arms up and somebody would pick me up. I had big eyes, and I was kind of chubby and happy, and everyone liked me. I know what you’re thinking, how is it different from now, but it was. I remember even Gemma would try to pick me up, and she was too little, so she’d end up dragging me around by the arms until Mum would rescue me. I was a happy little fucker.”

“But then...you know, my dad left us, when I was seven, yeah? And after that, everything stopped seeming lovely, because I thought it was my fault. I was a kid; that’s what kids think, right? And to me it seemed like one minute he was there, and the next he was gone, and Mum cried when she thought we weren’t looking, and sometimes I’d hold my arms out and she wouldn’t see me.”

Zayn pushes himself closer to Harry and wraps his arms loosely around his collarbone. He kisses him on the cheek. “That was a tough one, H. We always think it’s us when we’re wee.”

“Yeah, so then I knew things were wrong, and I didn’t understand why exactly, and it was the first time I ever had to go without something like this, to feel this kind of loss. I cried a lot, at night in bed. I sassed my mum and picked fights with Gemma. I wet the bed once. I had a nightmare, and I wet the bed, something I hadn’t done for ages.”

“I guess I would have gotten over it. I guess I did get over it. I mean, I stopped sassing Mum and started trying to help her not be sad, and I could sleep ok, but then something happened.” He stops, feeling a numbness in his extremities and an ache in his belly that might be the shots but probably not. He’s never talked about this. Zayn told him about Charles, something he’s never told anyone, so he knows he can trust him, but this isn’t about trust. It’s about shame.

“By then I must have been eight, and we still had the house. I was playing outside with a ball, and I kept kicking it and kicking it until I was far enough away from our house that I could barely see it. I remember I looked back, and it seemed like it was miles away.”

Zayn’s voice is soft in his ear. “Yeah, babe. You wandered off, like. Most kids will do that from time to time. What happened next?”

“I saw a car, like an older car, a big one, pull over to the kerb. He was pretty close to me. There was a man inside. He seemed really old, but now I don’t know. Maybe he was forty or fifty. He seemed like a really old man to me, I was so small….”

Harry knows he’s babbling, he’s doing that thing they all tease him about, going on and on, but he doesn’t want to tell the rest suddenly. His voice is stuck in his throat, but then Zayn puts a warm hand over his heart, just under the smaller swallow, just over Harry’s nipple, and Harry knows Zayn can feel his heart pounding.

“Did the man do something to you, Haz?”

“No! I mean, I think he might’ve, because he crooked a finger at me and said, ‘Come here, little boy,’ and then I ran as fast as I could home. I lost one of my shoes, a loafer my mum had just bought me, because I was starting to grow and need new shoes all the time, but I just went on, I didn’t stop for it. I ran all the way home, and it took forever. Mum was still at work, but Gemma was there, and we had a babysitter that day watching telly in the front room, but I ran upstairs and threw myself in my bed. For hours I hid under the covers, afraid the man was going to come in the house and pick me up and take me away.”

“I always liked being cute, but that day I started to hate it too. It felt like my fault, for being alone and far from home like that, and for being cute and always getting what I wanted.”

“Ah, babe,” Zayn murmurs, and his hand over Harry’s heart starts to circle soothingly. Harry’s nipple hardens under Zayn’s warm hand; he can’t help it. Everything Zayn does seems sexual. Then he remembers.

“Oh, Z, after that sometimes I had nightmares where the man caught me and bit me, and I would wake up feeling afraid but something else too, between my legs. God. This is so embarrassing. Don’t look at me!”

Zayn stops drawing circles on his chest and plants his chin on Harry’s shoulder. “Tell me the rest, Harry. Tell me all of it.”

“Well, here’s the thing. It’s weird, really, but ever since then I’ve had a bit of a thing for older men. I don’t know why, really. I didn’t want to fuck my dad, because gross, and I didn’t want to get in the car with that man, but somehow the loss of my dad and the tone of that old man’s voice have gotten mixed up in my head with something I want. There’s something sensual in it, in a way, and so now sometimes I wants to snog Simon. I told you it was weird!”

“No!” Zayn says, truly scandalized for the first time in their friendship.

And Harry laughs and says, “Stop, I would never ever, I said almost. It’s like I have the thought, and then right away the rest of my brain says no way. It’s just a thing that I have, for older men. It’s for older women too, I guess. I really liked Caroline. I knew it wasn’t right, and I knew I shouldn’t do it for a thousand reasons, but when someone older wants me it’s really hard to resist.”

He looks at Zayn, finally, at Zayn’s beautiful, clean profile and the long thick lashes that he wants to rub his lips against. Zayn looks back at him, and he smiles. “No judgment, Haz.” He laughs a little. “Your sins are forgiven, babe, although it seems you were more sinned against. But no snogging with Simon.”

Harry laughs a little too. He feels relief and love for Zayn, who is, after all, his best mate.


	5. The Consequences of Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Zayn have become deeply intimate. It's much easier to hurt each other and much harder to handle.

At some point, he can’t pinpoint when exactly, Harry no longer wants to “do” Zayn. He still wants him, still finds him eerily beautiful, but it’s become complicated by feelings of affection, of brotherhood, of intimacy, of protection. At times, when they are talking in the dark, he feels overwhelmed by so much love that his eyes fill, and he grips Zayn’s narrow shoulders as tightly as he dares. At other times, he feels impatience at all the ways that Zayn is insecure--how can it be that this beautiful, kind, affectionate boy doesn’t see himself the way Harry sees him?

In the quiet hours after midnight, Harry and Zayn listen to each other. Sometimes Harry kisses Zayn on the cheek or rubs his own against Zayn’s, but his touch is carefully non-sexual; Zayn never looks more beautiful than he does in the TV screen light, but he never seems more human. In this liminal space, Harry and Zayn give and receive the sacrament of understanding. To make it sexual terrifies Harry. It is already so intimate.

It’s on one of their confessional nights that Harry has expressed in hushed tones, as though the walls might hear and judge him, that he sometimes is afraid of their fans, of their fervor and their unchecked ardor, how sometimes it seems almost violent in its passion. He still feels like the popular boy from a little town--cute, likable, sure, but in no way worthy of the adoration these fans express night after night. Zayn is surprised that Harry feels this; he says how confident Harry seems. Harry says wryly that he has them all fooled, doesn’t he. A comfortable silence falls.

“Hey, Haz. I need to talk to you about something, but I think it might make you mad.”

Harry hates when Zayn does this, because he is going to talk about it, and now Harry is prevented from getting mad even if Zayn really deserves it, because he can’t get mad if Zayn says he’s going to. He just can’t. It happened when Zayn proposed to Perrie without talking it over with Harry beforehand, which was the worst betrayal. He sighs, mostly inwardly. Zayn never admits to being manipulative, but he does this all the time. Harry never says anything, though. He never wants to risk not being told. He loves being the only one who knows Zayn in these ways.

“You know you can tell me anything, Z. I didn’t get mad about Perrie, did I.”

“Actually, you did. You made fun of it, and you wouldn’t let me talk about it in interviews, and you stopped touching me on stage for weeks.”

Harry can be manipulative, too, and a tiny bit vindictive, but he doesn’t admit it, not even to himself.

“Well, you’ve been sensitive on that topic, and you know I think it’s because you know you’re too young to be engaged or to be thinking about getting married, and if I make fun of you--”

“Ok! Never mind! Jesus, I don’t want to have this conversation again.” Zayn reaches back to the bed where Harry’s head is on his folded arms. He scratches Harry’s scalp in the soft spot where Harry loves to be touched, because they both know how to shut each other up, and this always works. 

“That feels so good, Z. Thanks for growing out your nails a little so you can scratch me better. It’s better than sex, which I am not having, do y’notice, because I’m always up here with you? So tell me something really secret, so I can wank over it.”

Zayn laughs at him over his shoulder. “You know my entire sexual history, Harry. This isn’t going to be wank material.”

“Ok, well, keep scratching my head, and tell me anyway.”

“I think I want to look at you when I tell you.”

Harry thinks _oh_ , and he opens his eyes and lifts his head back up. “Shall I get on the floor with you, or should we both lie on the bed on the pillows? What is it? You’re scaring me.”

“Yeah, let’s get on the bed. I’d like to cuddle.”

Zayn doesn’t let Harry cuddle him often enough, in Harry’s opinion, and eternal optimist that he is, he brightens at the prospect even though he knows Zayn’s secret can’t be good.

They take a minute to settle under the duvet. Harry asks and receives permission to take off his pants, which is another red flag, if he stopped to think, but Harry is still delighting in the moment of being in the bed naked with Zayn, who is wearing only a tank and pants, so they’re basically naked together. Harry loves the feeling of skin against his, and he slips his own knee between Zayn’s knobby ones and throws an arm around his waist before scooting as close as he dares. “Tell me everything, Z.”

There is a long silence that Harry would call pregnant had he not made a mockery of the word every time Zayn brought up his engagement in interviews. Zayn isn’t looking at him, so Harry takes another chance, slipping the arm at Zayn’s waist out so that he can tilt Zayn’s chin up toward him. “Hey. Look at me. You really can tell me anything. You know that.”

“You’re going to be really mad, Haz.”

“It’s making me mad that you won’t tell me! Just--what is it? What can be so awful that you can’t tell me, the only person who knows you loved a boy or that you prefer fucking Perrie from behind?”

“Haz. It’s not that sort of thing. It’s not embarrassing. It’s serious.” Zayn sees the look in Harry’s eyes and rushes out, “Ok, ok. I’m going to just say it, ok?”

Harry swallows his impatience, instead stroking Zayn’s neck, which is something he has learned relaxes Zayn in the same way having his head scratched does for him.

“I want to leave the band.”

Harry’s hand stops mid-stroke. He knows Zayn isn’t kidding. In the seconds after this revelation, Harry thinks of all the nights they’ve spent like this, all the ways that Zayn has become his best mate, his secret or not-so-secret crush, his island of sanity, his home. Selfishly, his first thought is “But how will I manage without you?” He doesn’t say this, of course. Zayn is prickly and sensitive, and because Harry understands so much about why, he has worked hard to control his habit of blurting out the first thing that comes to his mind, to be slow to respond, to be more like Zayn.

“I know you aren’t getting songs on the album. The schedule is ridiculous. We deserve a break. I’ll ask for one. They’ll have to give it to us. We’ve made Syco so much money they’ll have to let us rest for a bit. You’re so tired, babe.” Saying it, he sees it’s true, sees the blue shadows under Zayn’s eyes. He is usually so taken by Zayn’s lashes, by the shape and color of his eyes, by the tiny freckle on edge of his left iris that, rather than being a blemish, just augments Zayn’s beauty, that he hasn’t paid attention to the fatigue that now seems obvious, nor to the gauntness of his cheeks. “How much weight have you lost, Z?”

“I dunno. I can’t eat much. I’m anxious pretty much all the time. If it weren’t for you I probably would have been hospitalized by now, but you keep me just sane enough. I can’t keep doing it, though. I’m getting worse; I can feel it.”

“Is it the schedule? Or the constant crowds? Or all the other obligations?”

“Yes.” Zayn looks steadily into Harry’s eyes. “It’s all of it, plus I’m not cut out for this life. I don’t want to be a pop star, H. You were born for it, and watching how easy it is for you has made me realize even more how hard it is for me.”

“Oh, babe, it’s not easy for me either. I told you how the fans can scare me sometimes. I don't feel like I deserve this life. I manage it though, because, yeah, I do like this life, being adored and made a fuss over. What's not to like about that? I had to figure out how to handle it, though. A long time ago, before X Factor even, I constructed a person who was going to be Harry Styles in the world I wanted.”

Zayn looks at him quizzically. “What do you mean, Haz? Harry Styles in the world. Who’s in bed with me right now?”

Shit. Everything with Zayn gets filtered through his anxiety and his belief that he’s not enough, that he’s a bad person, that there must be something wrong with _you_ if you like him. Harry sighs internally again and reminds himself that he can negotiate this with him. They’re just in a bad spot, but he can always reassure his Zayn.

“You know me better than anyone, and you know how I’m basically shy, but I hide it, right? I kind of decided to do that when I was just a kid, after Dad left and when Mum started dating. I had to be the man of the house and take care of her some--anyway, this isn’t about me. I just hide my shyness, but it’s hard for me too. I liked it a lot at first, but it’s gotten harder, especially because we’ve gotten so close.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I just want it to be me and you. Like, when things happen, I want to be able to tell you about it right then instead of waiting days to have a hotel night or to get a minute with you when the other lads aren’t around.”

“You don’t show that at all.” Zayn’s eyes look softer, and he looks straight at Harry. It’s already better. Zayn is so kind, really. He always feels worse for Harry than for himself.

“I know I don’t. But I feel it. It’s not as much fun being famous after doing it this long, is it? Like, I love it, in some ways, I love performing anyway, but, I don’t know. I guess I just understand how you feel?” Harry has looked away, but now he looks back at Zayn, who is eyeing him skeptically.

“Maybe I don’t know how you feel, Z. Maybe you should tell me more about it.”

He listens into the night. No one comes to the door; they know that this time is special for Harry and Zayn. He listens even as Zayn hurts him with his words, with how lonely he’s felt, in spite of their confessionals that have made Harry feel uniquely connected, and how he hates the music they play and hates being on stage, even though Harry is there with him, every night, getting him water and whispering in his ear and paying him compliments. 

As he listens, he also begins to feel lonely and to feel the first intimations that his relationship with Zayn is changing. Outwardly he strokes Zayn’s neck and murmurs sympathy, but his heart is growing a little cold as he thinks idly of how he will need to protect himself if this is not just Zayn whingeing as he sometimes does. Harry begins to withdraw, just a bit, unconsciously, unintentionally, naturally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They won't stay here hanging, I promise. It's not a comfortable place to be. As always, any resemblance to the people who bear the names of these characters is probably coincidental.


End file.
